Water coolers, which are commonplace throughout business and industry, typically employ a large capacity (e.g. five-gallon) water bottle. During transport to the customer's premises, the water bottles are usually carried on an open truck bed and thereby exposed to contaminants such as automobile exhaust, road grime and other atmospheric pollutants. Moreover, during handling by installation personnel, the external surface of the bottle is exposed to communicable disease organisms. When a replacement bottle is to be installed in the water cooler, the empty (inverted) bottle is lifted off the rim of the opening in the water tank. Then, with the new bottle being lowered into the tank, the installer holds the cap against the mouth of the bottle and removes the cap as the shoulder region of the bottle comes to rest on the circular rim of opening of the tank, as diagrammatically illustrated in FIG. 1. Namely, the bottle 10 is installed such that it is supported at its shoulder region 12 around the rim or perimeter 14 of the opening 16 in the top of the water cooler tank 18. Because a substantial portion of the upper portion of the bottle, specifically its neck 15 and shoulder regions 14, is exposed through opening 16, there is nothing to prevent contaminants on these exposed bottle surfaces from falling into the cooler tank.
A commonplace household procedure is to simply wipe off the bottle before installation. A problem with this sanitizing effort is that, in the course of cleaning the bottle, there is further contact with the surfaces of the bottle to which the tank water will be exposed. Moreover, most water cooler bottles are currently made of plastic, which, in practice, cannot be hygienically cleaned. As a consequence, the condition of the installed water bottle is still less than sanitary.